


Ill-Remembered

by draculard



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: A Long and Happy Reign, Character Study, Multi, Off-screen Character Death, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sibling Incest, This probably counts as Peter-bashing, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 03:10:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20632118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: They're six months into their reign when Peter dies.





	Ill-Remembered

They’re six months into their reign when Peter dies.

Later on, that’s how Edmund remembers him. That’s the _only_ way Edmund remembers him: a broken body at the bottom of a cliff, blond hair stained red, skull broken. The Peter who came before that incident is just a blur; there are no specific memories Edmund can cling onto, no echo of a voice to whisper half-remembered inside jokes to him at night.

He can’t remember how Peter looked when he smiled. He can’t remember Peter’s favorite games.

The winter after Peter dies, Edmund asks his sisters, “What did Father Christmas bring you?” And then he amends his statement to what he truly means: “What did Father Christmas bring Peter?”

“A shield, of course,” says Lucy promptly, but a line appears between Susan’s eyebrows, and she says, her words slow,

“No, a sword.”

They look at each other uncertainly.

“It could have been both,” says Susan eventually as a show of reconciliation, not because she truly believes this was so. Her lips press together in a thin line. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Edmund says. This, too, is nothing more than reconciliation — an apology for bringing it up.

Years later, though, he finds it truly doesn’t matter. Peter is no more a Pevensie than Mr. and Mrs. Beaver were.

Peter is gone.

* * *

What Susan will never tell the others is that, after so many years, all she remembers of Peter is this: That he noticed her beauty before anyone else did. That he was jealous of her, like a lover might be. That he cornered her in her bedroom one night before the evacuation from London, when Edmund and Lucy were asleep, and he pressed chapped lips against hers, laughed nervously, and tried to touch her breasts.

They told their parents he’d sprained his wrist boxing. They believed that. They didn’t look too closely at the bruises shaped like fingerprints on Peter’s skin.

Edmund and Lucy grow tall in Narnia; Edmund grows taller than Peter ever was, and more handsome, and by the time Susan notices Lucy’s sudden beauty, she’s forgotten what Peter looked like at all.

Dark or fair? Broad or thin? She sees dark hair on Edmund’s head, complementing his eyes, and auburn for both herself and Lucy. He must have been dark as well, then. Broad or thin — well, Susan is muscular herself, and Edmund is slim but wiry, and Lucy is the same. Thin, then, she decides. But it doesn’t matter in the end. 

Three years after Peter’s death, Susan realizes she isn’t sure what day he died, and she’s too ashamed to ask Lucy or Edmund if they remember. 

All she knows now is this: that Edmund and Lucy are here. That they are both kind and bright and wise, valiant and just. That she can turn to them and see their faces whenever she wishes — Lucy’s full lips and Edmund’s dark eyes and the sharp, aquiline nose they share.

When Edmund kisses her, it just feels right. His lips are soft and gentle. He tastes like honey; he’s never given up his love for sweets.

And when Lucy’s hand finds Susan’s breast, she forgets that Peter ever existed at all.

* * *

_Protector,_ that’s how she thinks of him. But she realizes eventually that this image she’s constructed in her head is a myth — the myth of the strong big brother, the myth of the wise and mighty king.

She can’t remember a single instance where Peter protected her. She wracks her mind and comes up empty-handed.

Susan has protected her. Susan has stood back-to-back with Lucy so that their hair tangles together in the wind, and she’s used her position to fire arrows with deadly precision, keeping their enemies at bay. And Susan has protected her in other ways -- Lucy remembers seeing those muscles bare and covered in a sheen of sweat, remembers thinking how easily Susan could hurt her if she wished. But she didn’t; she made Lucy’s first time all gentleness, all softness, all pleasure.

And Edmund has protected her, even when he had no weapon. He’s fought for her with his bare hands and with his silver tongue.

And when he joined Lucy and Susan in bed, he used that tongue to make her come harder than she ever had before. When he pushed into her for the very first time, he was so gentle she didn’t bleed, so careful that she felt no pain at all.

To Lucy, Susan and Edmund may as well be extensions of her own body, reflections of her own mind.

And Peter is nothing but an ill-remembered ghost.


End file.
